Russia breached its oil-output quota agreed with OPEC for a third straight month as the oil producers’ alliance prepares for crucial talks this month on increasing supplies.
Oil output averaged 10.97 million barrels a day last month, almost unchanged from a month earlier, data emailed on Saturday by the Russian Ministry of Energy’s CDU-TEK statistics unit showed.
That means that its compliance with the production quota of 10.95 million was close to 95 percent, as it was in April. In March, the rate was 93 percent.
Russia and Saudi Arabia last month signaled that they might start increasing supplies in the second half of this year in response to a surge in prices. The move is yet to be approved by other members of the OPEC and its allies, and some, such as Ecuador, have said that they are not in favor.
The 24-member group is scheduled to meet in Vienna later this month to discuss the future of their landmark 2016 accord.
Several Russian companies want the production cap eased, as the grand alliance has already achieved a key goal of draining a surplus in global stockpiles.
The deal with OPEC has been a success and “we believe that the global energy market is currently balanced,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on May 25. “Our arrangements were never intended to remain in force forever.”
Russia has about 500,000 barrels a day of spare production capacity, according to Gazprom Neft PJSC, the country’s third-largest producer.
The company and Rosneft PJSC are to lead the ramp-up if output restrictions are eased, Citigroup Inc and ESAI Energy LLC said.
Rosneft this week started testing its capacity to increase output.
OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, is also lifting supply. Production rose to the highest in seven months last month, tanker-tracker Petro-Logistics SA said.
Meanwhile, Russia and Abu Dhabi on Friday signed a cooperation agreement to stabilize energy markets amid a rising trend in oil prices, the Kremlin said.
The deal, signed by Putin and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, calls for both countries to maintain contacts “to ensure balance and stability on the global hydrocarbon market, taking into account the interests of producers and consumers.”
Abu Dhabi, one of seven states in the United Arab Emirates, holds more than 90 percent of the federation’s 98 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves. The emirates are OPEC’s fourth-largest crude oil producer.
Additional reporting by AFP
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to